From STLtoday.com: According to crime figures released by the FBI on Monday, the nation saw a 2.5 percent increase in violent crime: murder, rape, robbery and assault. Murder alone increased by 4.8 percent in the past year.

The 12-state Midwest region fared even worse, with reports of violent crime rising by 5.7 percent. Some criminologists pointed to higher unemployment rates in the region. For example, Detroit, Minneapolis and Milwaukee each saw reports of violent crime jump by about one-third. In St. Louis, police Chief Joe Mokwa said assaults continued to climb during the first five months this year.

After steep declines in U.S. crime during the 1990s, followed by five years of unevenly middling results, 2005 marked the first year that reports of crime increased uniformly across U.S. cities, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. More. . . [Mark Godsey]